GM SpiderBeard's Carrion Crown (Inactive)

Game Master motteditor

Okaydokay.

And my intro posts are up on the gameplay thread! Have fun.

All right, trust mechanic is sorted out. I believe Pizzmic had you at +7 (27 in actuality) but two days in Ravengro will have reduced that to 25. So as of today you have 25 trust.

Ah, so they get less friendly as days go on? Hmm.

Or what I like to call, the Eldon effect
lol

lol!

Yeah. The strain of events (and tall tales) slowly deplete the town's already meagre good will.

Eldon sneezes, and warily looks around. "Huh, someone in Golarion is probably saying how awesome I am."

I just saw the "Dramatis Personae" section of the Campaign tab. That's a fun idea!

Hmm. I also had a post here that must have got eaten. Anyway, I wanted to complement Eldon on a really nice use of his knowledge skills, providing the reasons and what he might be looking for. That is a good idea I should follow, and perhaps, in my own games, give a good bonus for. It is much more flavorful than just "Perception: 1d17 + 10 = 27".

I also like it when more Knowledge skills are used than Knowledge (Local). In a recent game I GMed - The Stolen Heir - even the past events related to nobles didn't get discovered by Knowledge (Nobility)! Well, at least how the scenario was written; I allowed it, of course.

I also like it! :) In the PFS scenarios I GM'd some time ago I wrote an epilogue for all the players. It was quite fun, and added some flavor to the end of the scenario. But, I think Eldon would annoy the other party members even more if he starts singing as well? Haha xD

And thank you, Norna! I do feel a bit sorry for the GM though, after my last post. Though most of the questions are the same, just repeated for all 5 prisoners. (Except the question if Father Charlatan is the Father from the song.)

Most of my characters don't have a lot of knowledge skills, but I intend to let them take more. It's proven very useful on my characters that do have them. Eldon's my only bard, and I intend to train him in more knowledge skills when he levels again :)

Thanks, the dramatis personae bit was fun. I realised there's no reason not to include writeups for the PCs when I was doing so for the NPCs.

And honestly - I type fast. IF you want to write up all those knowledge checks I'll reward your effort. A great knowledge nobility roll on a question about cave moss is going to yield very situational information if any at all, but if you wanna try it, there's nothing wrong with that. I think it adds to the game and the PCs understanding of the world. We're all richer for it!

Although holy crap that is a lot of knowledge checks. o.o

Yeah, I have a high-Int wizard (Garedon) who has become my first character with a lot of knowledge skills. He is kind of obnoxious (however well-meaning) and very long-winded, as one might expect from someone with Int 19 and Cha 7. To make matters more extreme along those lines, I have him use "Clear Ear" (from the Adventurer's Armory), which adds +2 to Knowledge and Perception skill checks and has a -2 penalty on Cha skill checks. (Works well for a Wizard, probably less well for a Bard.)

I wish that they would give a few more skill points for each character, perhaps as starting packages, just to have them a little more well-rounded. I tend not to overly-optimize my characters, keeping 12's and 14's for Int on my paladins, oracles, and clerics, but still 3 or 4 skill points to start doesn't give much of a base. If I throw in a few points for character reasons (like Profession (Sailing)), then there is even less for the crucial skills.

I have a level 1 fighter named Jefrey, who runs an Odd Jobs company. He's a human with 10 Int, and thus has 3 skill points a level. I just had to put one point in Profession [Odd Jobs] :P

I've seen a house rule where GMs allow players to take a profession for free. I could be convinced to do something like that if there's will. That way when some poor bastard has Profession Basket Weaver and it becomes relevant for one time in the campaign, he will feel like a GOD.

Wouldn't that be a craft skill. Lol
makes me think of the three amigos movie when asking for skills to use against Mexican bandits.
"What can this village do well?"
(Silence)
"We can sew"
"Oh. If only we had know this before"

Sorry I'm late. I went to a bachelor party in Atlantic City. A few nights of drinking and bad decisions and lots of hot ass girls walking around. But, I'm back. May not post right away, since I had 4 hours to my sleep coma, and I think I may still be a little drunk (2 of those big bottles of Captain Morgan downed. And I'm still alive.)

Does art imitate life, Burlee?

Good lord. Take the night off, we can get stuff going again tomorrow. :D In the meantime I will recover from ruthlessly disintegrating a beloved lvl 14 character in Rise of the Runelords at my in-person table.

Okay, I'm going to opine that Heto has moved on and move his character to inactive. Does the group prefer we get a new sixth, or continue with five?

Personally, I like having six, and see having 4 or 5 usually only when you can't get 6.

One reason I like six is that you'll have more players to cover more of the roles - fighter, ranger, magic-user, cleric and thief, not to mention monk, druid, and paladin! ;-) - and races.

Now, with Knowledge skills too, you can often get by without making those rolls, but you just miss more of the story.

Also, with more characters, you'll have more players to keep the ideas coming and the game from getting stuck.

Hmm... I always roll, but perhaps I should start taking 10 for a total of 21 Diplomacy. I think that'll cover almost any situation, especially with aid rolls.

I'm not sure if we need a new 6th person, as this is originally a game for 4 players and I think we'll do just fine with 5. But if we can get more out of the story with 6 people, like Norna said, I don't mind if a new 6th player joins.

I never thought about it that way, but Matt is right about how 6 people get more out of the content; especially with adventure paths which aren't written with any of the characters in mind. I tend to migrate towards 4 as that's the 'classic' number and the content moves along a little quicker. But the group gets to decide on this one, I'll only vote if there's a tie breaker needed.

Yeah, another player would be good. A pally would be nice, or a rogue. Or a witch, very thematic, though it might get us lynched.

Oh, and as a heads-up I'm at a conference starting tomorrow for several days. I'll still be posting but my hours and frequency may change up.

I'll have to send Heto a note, though, that I really did enjoy his story telling (if he will ever see it). He had the zen monk internal dialogue really down.

Yeah :( Heto was a compellingly played character and considering the deranged stuff this campaign puts you through I was very interested to see how that would all play out. I've sent him a note as well.

Woah! 1 shot! I hoped it was one actually, it looked like one hell of a lot of dmg.

Yep! That was a 1 shot. Good go for your first swing. :D

To talk to Lena's point, it's surprising to me and goes against an old saw "illusions don't work on undead" which was true in every version of D&D I played. Pathfinder splits illusions into several subtypes, and silent image is a 'figment'.

Figments work on anything that can view them. Other illusions like phantasms affect the mind and so would not work, but a figment is external. It doesn't need someone to look at it for it to exist. I checked the undead traits, magic section, and language under illusions and it all checks out.

That said a lot of GMs rule differently. I'm happy to go with the RAW here because bards tend to suffer in undead-heavy games, and I really enjoy clever use of illusion spells.

I looked at it, too, and it seems to work.

I wish there was more clarity, though, about the phrase "if interacted with" and its conditions. If a large snake was in front of me (as a PF person), it would startle me initially and, if I recovered from the heart attack, the lack of noise and smell would seem to give it away, as would being able to walk through it. Presumably, anything that is attracted to attack living things would have enough instinct to make the distinction, at least after a bit.

That said, one reason that I have Illusions as a 'prohibited school' for my two wizards is that I am not terribly clever with them. :-P

Interact means getting a response from the illusion, whether tactile (touching it) or otherwise. Talking to an illusion of a guard is interacting with it, as his hitting an illusionary snake. If the illusion is silent when it should be noisy, not hearing it is interacting. That is the weakness of silent image. Even smell could throw it. Or tasting.

That's how I see it.

btw I see your point about figments spiderbeard, I just thought undead had an immunity.

Yeah, silent image's obvious weakness is that the moment you engage any sense other than looking, it is obviously an illusion. I was generous with the undead since, hey, they're kinda dumb. :D

I'm glad the distraction worked as planned :) And Arval totally oblitarated the undead. Though it's obvious Eldon finished the last off. *cough*

Alas, as you may have noticed it looks like Burlee has parted ways with us too and so I'll be moving him to inactive. The mood with the group seems to be to bring two more in, so I'm actually going to reach out to RL friends of mine to bring us back up to six people.

Hello every one looks like I will be joining you guys. Looking forward to it. I will make up a character, I'm thinking a paladin, or I might look at one of the other classes that I have not played before. I will let you all know in the next day or so what I have decided on.

And allow me to introduce Rick! Rick plays in my RL Rise of the Runelords game and has started PbP in my Wrath of the Righteous game.

Welcome, Rick!

I'm Matt, playing Norna, your gnome cleric of Desna.

Originally, GM Pizzmic limited the classes and races to the CRB materials, but I would be open to opening it up to any of them. (Well, perhaps any that are PFS allowed - there are a few classes that are a bit infamous, like synthesist, whatever that is.)

Here's my character creation stuff since Clint will want to see this if he comes aboard. I'm willing to let others weigh in:

- All classes allowed. I do not like eastern classes in my western fantasy but will listen to arguments.
- I STRONGLY prefer standard races, but will consider interesting character concepts with nonstandard races. I do not want to spend my time with townsfolk chasing a PC goblin or something.
- Level two.
- 1 trait, 1 campaign trait. You can pick something other than a campaign trait if you really want, just explain how it ties you to Professor Lorrimor.
- 1000 gold
- 20 point buy. Your stats should figure in to how you play your character.
- You are playing a hero; good characters, or heroic neutral characters only.
- Max HP at 1st, roll from there on out. Reroll 1s.
- No 3rd party supplements.
- Please post a full stat block in your characetr sheet.
- The classes/levels line should include:
Hit points, saves, armour class, initiative at bare minimum.

I will put this out to everyone. What do you think the this party needs most in way of a character? I'm willing to try something new, I have play a Paladin, Rogue/Ninja, and Summoner.

Hey there, Arval here! I'm a fighter right now :) mostly equipped as a tank.

Hmmm
a pally would be good. A witch would be thematic. If fact my first idea for vladlena was to be a witch. A summoner would also be good.

A pity about burlee, though.

I would probably go for a paladin, so that there are two fighters, and the paladin would add detect evil and some nice immunities later, back up healing, etc. I also have a soft spot for paladins, especially dwarven paladins (although I don't know how well dwarven paladins do in PF, with their Charisma hit), but I usually play clerics because others tend to avoid the class.

Rogues seem to be a neglected class in PF, with very long threads being devoted to ideas about fixing them. It seems that people tend to take other classes/archetypes for trapfinding and such (I think urban ranger is one).

(Disclaimer: I don't know much about character or party optimization.)

~~

Vladlena, Yes, definitely a pity about Burlee. Quite a fun character, and one with great potential to evolve, too.

~~

GM, 1000 gold? I'm still playing around with my first 165 gold starting wealth. :-( Going to have start singing for my supper and, believe me, no one wants that. :-P

I also prefer average rounded up for HP. As a GM in one of my groups said, "there'll be plenty of time for the dice to screw with you." But, your call.

To respond in kind:

When you count the loot from the false crypt the party wealth is probably equivalent to 1k each. Granted, that doesn't mean you have masterwork weapons on you but going with something aside from average wealth complicates things.

I prefer average hp rounded up as well, but when I implement that players complain that they lose out on the thrill of rolling dice. If you guys are cool with avg rounded up I'll go for that instead.

As for characters, we're also bringing in one more beyond Rick so things are fairly open. Paladin is an easy choice for this campaign I think; more holy the better.

Hello rjay, welcome to our party!

A paladin or cleric would be neat. Though a summoner would be a good addition as well.

And indeed, it's a shame Burlee left. I enjoyed reading his posts :(

A cleric? Again with the cleric! ... *heavy sigh* :-(

OK, we can do 2 clerics, or I can start bopping everyone on the head with the Power of the Word of Desna. I guess Norna's just a little too mellow about being a cleric. She did do a channel heal in the last combat, though, and that was pretty cleric-y. Although,

A Sun and Restoration domain cleric would be more powerful against undead, to be sure, though, but Desna was mentioned as one of the deities worshiped in the area, and is a favorite of mine (and Norna) for various reasons.

I think it's because you default to gnome, rather than cleric.
lol

I like your character, Norna! :)

We could also add two paladins, and they'll be twins. I bet it's fun to play twins with someone else! :P

I remember someone once suggested a group of entirely paladins. Although that would be fun for its own reasons, personally I'm a fan of variety. ;) There are very few bad choices to make with regards to classes so I'm sure we'll get something that's an asset to the group.

Okay Paladin it is, I will have it done today :), I'm going to read through the gameplay to get up to speed on what has happened thus far.

Taking a little longer than I thought it would, I promise to have everything done by tomorrow night.

Are we rolling for HP or using the average?